Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Last week, I used some different metrics to quantify bunting performance in 2010. In this post, I would like to build on what I found after researching the first part of this post. The clear issue with using data from only one year is that it becomes susceptible to small sample sizes, and since bunt attempts occur on such a small percentage of swings, that issue is magnified in this case. In order to get a better feel for bunting skill, I've set up the statistics I used last week for 2008 and 2009 data. Before I get into go on, I'd like to revisit the league averages that I showed at the beginning of last week's post.

Attempt%

Fair%

Foul%

Missed%

2008

.020

.501

.425

.074

2009

.020

.509

.421

.070

2010

.019

.505

.416

.080

.019

.502

.423

.075

Hit%

Out%

Sac%

Double Play%

2008

.189

.285

.515

.011

2009

.177

.288

.528

.007

2010

.188

.286

.517

.009

.184

.286

.520

.009

The league-wide samples stay pretty consistent year to year, which is good for establishing baselines for these metrics. However, the samples that I used in last week's post (20 bunt attempts or 10 fair bunts) did not correlate very well year-to-year. Notable R^2 are as follows: hit% - .514, out% - .226, sac% - .528, Bunt Runs/100 - .178. The one that surprised me the most, however, was coefficient of determination for fair bunt%. That was only .065, which I found strange considering fair bunt% appears to be a distinct skill. Bear in mind that even though we're looking at three years' worth of data, it's still a small sample size. In order to get players that were qualified bunters in back-to-back years, I had to eliminate all but 82 of the individual seasons. I was particularly puzzled by the low correlation for fair bunts, which I figured would be a detectable skill even in the limited sample.

Since we appear to have some of the SSS blues, I think the best way for us to cheer ourselves up is to open up the leaderboards to include 2008 and 2009 data. Well, maybe that's just me. Anyway, this section is going to contain a lot of tables - I'll have leaders and trailers for all of the metrics I discussed last week, along with some commentary when I feel it is necessary. Also, the minimums are now at 50 bunt attempts and 25 fair bunts. I'll begin with attempt percentage, for which I won't show any trailers (there 55 qualified players who haven't attempted a bunt in the three years). Oh, also, the swing minimum for attempt% is 1,000.

Rank

Name

Swing#

Attempt%

1

Willy Taveras

1625

.118

2

Carlos Gomez

2178

.114

3

Julio Borbon

1049

.104

4

Emilio Bonifacio

1666

.093

5

Erick Aybar

2420

.092

6

Nyjer Morgan

2181

.091

7

Juan Pierre

2386

.086

8

Gregor Blanco

1293

.081

9

Alexi Casilla

1290

.078

10

Luis Castillo

1652

.076

My love for the fair bunt% statistic is slightly diminished after seeing how poorly it correlated in my data, but I still think that it's an important statistic to look at. Below are the 10 leaders and trailers for fair bunt%; Chris Young (of the Diamondbacks) is really in a league of his own.

Rank

Name

Attempts

Fair Bunt%

1

Ramon Santiago

65

.769

2

Joey Gathright

78

.692

3

David Eckstein

78

.679

4

Clayton Kershaw

62

.677

5

Zach Duke

64

.672

6

Scott Podsednik

68

.662

7

Cole Hamels

53

.660

8

Franklin Gutierrez

51

.627

9

Ryan Dempster

80

.625

10

Elvis Andrus

103

.621

1x

Chris Young

51

.157

2x

Rajai Davis

78

.295

3x

Corey Hart

69

.333

4x

Omar Infante

55

.364

5x

Melky Cabrera

65

.369

6x

B.J. Upton

73

.370

7x

Emilio Bonifacio

155

.381

8x

Emmanuel Burriss

70

.386

9x

Brendan Ryan

75

.387

10x

Ted Lilly

66

.394

The next set of leaderboards are for hit%, out%, and sac% out of fair bunts.

Rank

Name

Fair Bunts

Hit%

1

Ichiro Suzuki

37

.568

2

Lastings Milledge

25

.480

3

Jacoby Ellsbury

38

.474

4

Gregor Blanco

60

.450

5

Angel Pagan

36

.444

6

Jose Reyes

40

.425

7

Rafael Furcal

48

.417

8

Alexi Casilla

60

.417

9

Michael Bourn

99

.404

10

Carlos Gomez

117

.385

Rank

Name

Fair Bunts

Out%

1

Josh Anderson

26

.615

2

Emilio Bonifacio

59

.525

3

Joey Gathright

54

.519

4

Juan Pierre

107

.505

5

Tony Gwynn

39

.487

6

Rafael Furcal

48

.479

7

Carlos Gomez

117

.479

8

Emmanuel Burriss

27

.444

9

Nyjer Morgan

100

.440

10

Willy Taveras

107

.439

Rank

Name

Fair Bunts

Sac%

1

Braden Looper

25

.960

2

Jamie Moyer

29

.931

3

Ricky Nolasco

28

.893

4

Roy Oswalt

34

.882

5

Hiroki Kuroda

30

.867

6

Barry Zito

35

.857

7

Ryan Dempster

50

.840

8

Clayton Kershaw

42

.833

9

Livan Hernandez

28

.821

10

Derek Lowe

37

.811

Unsurprisingly, all of the sacrifice leaders are pitchers. The first position players to appear on the list are Daric Barton (.760), Yuniesky Betancourt (.724), and Jamey Carroll (.720).

Like I did last week, I will end with a glance at the best overall bunters with linear weights - this includes a weighting of their hits, sacrifices, and outs, and also takes into account missed and foul bunts. Again, I will present in a counting form and in the form of bunting runs / 100 pitches. However, in order to (hopefully) make it more intuitive, the rate stat will be scaled to the league average bunt as opposed to the league average event. Over the past three seasons, the average bunt has been worth -3.53 runs per 100 pitches, so that will be what I consider "average," or 0. Onto the best and worst bunters of the past three years:

Rank

Name

Bunt Runs

1

Ichiro Suzuki

5.41

2

Alexi Casilla

4.67

3

Gregor Blanco

4.32

4

Jacoby Ellsbury

3.87

5

Angel Pagan

3.77

6

Michael Bourn

2.70

7

Rafael Furcal

2.16

8

Erick Aybar

1.98

9

Cliff Pennington

1.94

10

Gerald Laird

1.84

1x

Juan Pierre

-9.54

2x

Ryan Dempster

-6.57

3x

Ubaldo Jimenez

-6.42

4x

Bronson Arroyo

-6.08

5x

Zach Duke

-5.88

6x

Mike Pelfrey

-5.69

7x

Ted Lilly

-5.54

8x

Derek Lowe

-5.44

9x

Orlando Hudson

-5.35

10x

Chad Billingsley

-5.00

Rank

Name

Bunt Runs / 100

1

Ichiro Suzuki

9.97

2

Angel Pagan

8.99

3

Jacoby Ellsbury

8.31

4

Alexi Casilla

8.19

5

Gregor Blanco

7.65

6

Cliff Pennington

6.26

7

Rafael Furcal

6.07

8

Coco Crisp

5.78

9

Gerald Laird

5.67

10

Jose Reyes

5.37

1x

Mike Pelfrey

-7.00

2x

Jeff Suppan

-6.33

3x

Ubaldo Jimenez

-6.20

4x

Zach Duke

-5.66

5x

Derek Lowe

-5.54

6x

Ted Lilly

-4.87

7x

Jair Jurrjens

-4.86

8x

Cole Hamels

-4.70

9x

Ryan Dempster

-4.69

10x

Clayton Kershaw

-4.22

As usual, the trailers include a lot of pitchers, who don't tend to get a lot of bunt hits. The first position players that appear on the list are Chris Young (-2.54), Brendan Ryan (-2.42), Tony Gwynn (-2.29), Yuniesky Betancourt (-1.70), and Juan Pierre (-1.13). Pierre has appeared a lot in these two posts, typically as a trailer in some category. Based on the data for these three years, he doesn't have the ability to be a productive enough bunter to offset his great number of bunt attempts. In fact, of the ten players that topped the attempt% list I showed at the beginning of this post, Pierre was the only player to grade out as a below-average bunter. One other note - I'm skeptical of the bunt runs values for Pennington and Furcal since Pennington had a bunt double and Furcal had two. Bunt doubles are essentially flukes, and since doubles are worth a lot more than singles are, they skew the run value totals.

With that, I'll put an end to this venture into bunting. There are more questions that I'd like to investigate (team bunting statistics and the impact of leverage on bunting as two that come to mind), and most importantly, I think we just need more data. For the time being, I would like to recognize Ichiro Suzuki as the best bunter of the past three years.